Customer Reviews

Fridge Words Magnetic Word Builder

5 star:		(119)
4 star:		(55)
3 star:		(26)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(34)

 

 

I was delighted to find out the magnets from the Fridge Phonics Magnetic Letter set also work with this! So if you have both, you can spell out double lettered words (such as "dad" and "mom" (and it is programmed to read those words, as well!)

The only problems we've been having with it are related to the tinny sound. The Fridge Phonics Magnetic Letter set sounded nice, but the Word Whammer sound quality is poorer. I know I had a hard time telling "Find the 'F'" from "Find the 'S'". Lucky for us adults, if we know what word it wants us to spell, we know which letter, but it confounds the kids.

If it weren't for the sound quality the toy would be *perfect*. It is really well designed, and very effective at keeping the kid's interest long enough for them not to realize they're learning while they're having fun. If you don't mind needing to translate what the machine said every so often, I highly recommend this.

Got it as a Christmas gift for our daughter (21 months) who is learning her letters. Great idea... but it didn't work. At least for one of the letters (the far left one). When you put a letter (any letter) in the spot, it says "A"... even when it's not A! (not good for a toddler learning her letters)

I looked at it more closely, and found that some of the tabs on that one spot were half-pressed down (there are six per spot, which is how the system recognizes each letter). That would explain the error... except that when I put a three-letter word in (like CAT), it recognizes it from that point on. Weird.

So after reading all these posts about this happening to other people, and those who opened it up and cleaned it, I decided to try it myself. (a little background: I was schooled as an electrical engineer) For those of you who don't want to read the gory details, nineteen screws, two different screwdrivers, one pair of pliers, and one hour later, it's now working.

If you get one that works out of the box, great. But based on the other reviews, if you get one that doesn't work (which seems like the odds are pretty good that it won't) and you don't have experience with small parts and electronics, you're probably best off getting your money back to avoid the hassles.

**Now, for those who want to know the gory details of fixing this little issue:
- First, in order to open the housing, you have to loosen twelve philips screws to get the two parts of the housing together. Not too bad; this can be done with an ordinary screwdriver.
- Next, in order to fix the issue of the stuck tabs, you need to separate the electronics plate from the housing. In total, there were eight small screws (you need a No.1 or smaller precision screwdriver) to loosen to completely get the plate off. Because I only had one that was a problem, I got away with loosening only five of the small screws. This freed up the assembly where the magnetic letters go.
- Once you get that assembly out, you need to separate the tab section from the magnetic section. Each of the assemblies has two small screws connecting the two parts, which needs to be undone. You can put aside the magnetic section
- Now you have the tab section. This section is composed of three main parts: the actual green tabs (six), a rubber gasket-type cover that they sit on, and the electronics backing which is pressure-activated based on which tabs are depressed. Once I looked at it, I realized that the problem with my device was that the rubber cover was stuck, which is why some tabs were depressed. (Therefore, swabbing it with alcohol would not have solved the problem). Once I worked it loose, I could reassemble the parts. Note that this can be very laborious if you don't have a pair of pliers and/or haven't worked with small parts before, as the tabs sit precariously on the rubber gasket!
- Once I reassembled everything, it worked fine... but it took about an hour to do (and a very patient wife!)

I bought this for my three year old son on Sunday. It's only Tuesday and he is spelling words on his own without a problem. I recommend that you purchase the Fridge Phonics Alphabet Letters FIRST like I did, so they can learn their letters well. Once they master the entire alphabet, they can graduate to the Word Wammer. I only showed him how to play once, and he went on from there. It's amazing! Leap Frog is the best! Hopefully they will come up with fridge numbers soon!!

My daugter received both the Word Whammer and Fridge Phonics for her second birthday. The Word Whammer has three modes. The first mode is almost identical to the Fridge Phonics set. The song is a little bit shorter, but it sings the letter name and the sounds it makes. If you press a letter twice, it has a phrase with that letter, something that the Fridge Phonics doesn't do. For example, the "c" is "It's c-c-c-c-old in here!". The "a" is "aaaaaaah! I'm scared of monsters!". It's very cute. The second mode is for making words. If you just put in one letter, it will prompt you to put a vowel (a "blue letter") in the second spot. When you spell a word, it sings a short song. In the third mode, it prompts you to try to spell words that rhyme. It is a great toy with much more "grow with me" potential than the Fridge Phonics.

My 3 1/2 year old son has started speech therapy to help him articulate certain sounds correctly. His older brother answered everything for him so he is alittle behind for his age. We own both "Letter Factory" & "Word Factory" dvds. Both of my boys love them. During the speech lessons, my son often recites the songs as he practices. When we found the "Word Whammer" it absolutely increased his love to do his "homework". We highly recommend this...it's both educational & FUN.

Hi, I just received this item on amazon last week, just wanted to point out a few things:

1. You will notice in the product images are 2 products, the Word Whammer and the Word Builder, though this listing is for the Word Builder.
The Word Builder is the updated version of the Word Whammer.

However, when I recieved my order from Amazon they sent me the wrong product, they sent me the Word Whammer at first!
I called them and they graciously sent the Word Builder by 1 day mail, so be aware that this may happen.

2. Other then the airplane theme, someone pointed out to me that the Word Builder includes lowercase letters. I thought this meant that it has both upper and lowercase letters. It doesn't. It ONLY has lowercase letters.
I think the idea is that if you bought the Leapfrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet set, meant for younger kids just learning letters, you would have the uppercase, then when your child is older, you get this one, the Word Builder which has the lowercase letters.
Since my child is 2 1/2 and I want the uppercase letters, I'm going to to buy this too, I guess... :(

Fyi, the Word Whammer had/has only uppercase like the LP fridge Alphabet Set.

Update: I bought the Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet set also, however I found out they are not interchangeable, the uppercase letters from the Fridge Phonics set do not fit in the Word Builder.

My daughter got this for her third birthday and LOVES it! It is the perfect addition to the original fridge phonics, and all of the letters work with both products! This toy helps teach how to spell three letter words like mom and dad, which is perfect for a three year old! I am dissapointed that the songs for the letters are not the same as fridge phonics, they were so catchy for little kids. Overall I would reccomend this product to anyone with a preschooler!

A NOTE ON COMPATIBILITY:

When my little girls started walking around, I purchased the Leapfrog alphabet for my fridge that she could learn her letters. As our little girl got older she started being able to tell between lower case and uppper case letters so we got her a lower case set.

A short couple of years later my little girl was spelling small three letter words so we picked up a three letter word speller from Leapfrog at a local large discount store. To our shock the letters from our original leapfrog set did not fit into the new set....not very smart on the part of leapfrog unless they want me to pay two or three times for letters.

So we did some digging on Amazon and found this set which uses the standard size letters from leapfrog so we don't have to go buy a whole other set of letters.

So I guess what I'm saying is CAUTION, leapfrog sells several sets of alphabets and spellers and sometimes the letters are not interchangeable.

REGARDING THIS PLAYER

It does what its intended to do. It has a couple of modes one for spelling and one for word games where it prompts the child to enter letters to form a word. Overall, my kid doesn't sit for hours in front of the fridge playing this game but every once in a while she'll stop there and play for a while.

If you have an old set, make sure you get the compatible player so you can reuse your words.

My daughter loves this Fridge Words. However, I wanted to post that the letters are NOT interchangeable with the old version Fridge Phonics with the frog on it. The Fridge Words letters are smaller than the older Fridge Phonics letters and neither works with the other. I'm disappointed to learn this because I bought her the Fridge Phonics when she was younger and now that she's the right age for the Fridge Words, they've resized the letters. Looking at the store, it looks like the letters are interchangeable with the new Fridge Phonics with the sun on it.

Mine also did not work right, always saying the wrong letters. But after the help of another reviewer it works perfect. So thanks to that person. Now that it works my kids LOVE it! It has helped my 3 year old learn his letters and helped my 5 year old spell! The only reason I gave it 3 stars was because I should not have to fix a brand new toy to make it work! I just wanted to let everyone else know how to fix the problem. So i copied the reviewer's post....

From Reviewer: A. Feng
- First, in order to open the housing, you have to loosen twelve philips screws to get the two parts of the housing together. Not too bad; this can be done with an ordinary screwdriver.
- Next, in order to fix the issue of the stuck tabs, you need to separate the electronics plate from the housing. In total, there were eight small screws (you need a No.1 or smaller precision screwdriver) to loosen to completely get the plate off. Because I only had one that was a problem, I got away with loosening only five of the small screws. This freed up the assembly where the magnetic letters go.
- Once you get that assembly out, you need to separate the tab section from the magnetic section. Each of the assemblies has two small screws connecting the two parts, which needs to be undone. You can put aside the magnetic section
- Now you have the tab section. This section is composed of three main parts: the actual green tabs (six), a rubber gasket-type cover that they sit on, and the electronics backing which is pressure-activated based on which tabs are depressed. Once I looked at it, I realized that the problem with my device was that the rubber cover was stuck, which is why some tabs were depressed. (Therefore, swabbing it with alcohol would not have solved the problem). Once I worked it loose, I could reassemble the parts. Note that this can be very laborious if you don't have a pair of pliers and/or haven't worked with small parts before, as the tabs sit precariously on the rubber gasket!
- Once I reassembled everything, it worked fine... but it took about an hour to do (and a very patient wife!)